Monitoring your brand online and in social media has become a no brainer. However, if you are neglecting your niche keywords and competitor brands you are letting opportunity fall out of your sales funnel.

Here are a few examples of a great Michigan brand, Steelcase monitoring social media for sales:

A big name Venture Capitalist and top Twitter influencer mentions his new “treadputer” being installed:

Nicely accompanied by a photo (note the number of views):

This smelled like opportunity for @Steelcase_Store:

Of course, I’m not quite sure why Steelcase’s review center isn’t a Flickr feed, or at least encouraging Flickr postings. Flickr has a lot more traffic than http://store.steelcase.com/go/ideas/. And much of what is already there is very inspiring to a prospective buyer:

However, the neatest part about good social media sales is getting the natural customer or partner driven sales—like these:

(the power of influencer outreach)

(the power of social media enabled partners)

And, don’t forget the opportunities competitors (lack of social media presence) gives you. Here is a priceless swipe from Herman Miller

@Steelcase_Store engages, but @HermanMiller (they look singularly focused on customer service) doesn’t…

Who do you think will get the sale?

This is a great case study on engaging prospects and seizing opportunities. My only recommendation would be to start extending this effort into a broader monitoring and engagement campaigns. I think a whole social media plan could be laid around new and traditional media coverage like Lifehacker.com’s obsession with standing desks and Treadputers and New York Time’s Stand Up While You Read This! Maybe even capture the Treadputer obsession on Facebook—that’s right “The page you requested was not found”—opportunity!